In search of geishas

Nara Travel Blog

We arrived to Kyoto in the early afternoon and were pleased to find out that our hotel was directly above the train station, in a building with a very impressive and unique architectural style. This building has several different stories with different features including a mall, an enormous food court, a movie theater and our hotel, the Hotel Granvia Kyoto. Our hotel turned out to be surprisingly upscale, especially since we had only paid an $125 per night rate on hotels.com. In fact, Yasu was surprised when we told him that we were staying at this hotel, especially when he heard how much it had cost us. Apparently we got a really great deal...

Our hotel's location was nicredibly convenient because it was right, smack in the middle of central Kyoto and across the street from the Kyoto tower, a Starbucks, several Pachinko parlors and lots of little shops.

I don't remember exactly who this is, but it actually has something to do with the occult. This is on the front part of Todaiji Temple.

Right after we arrived we crossed the street and enjoyed green tea frappuccinos at Starbucks and did some people-watching. People in Kyoto definitely seemed more reserved and traditional than the ones we had seen in Tokyo, with the exception of the tourists of course. We saw several scantily clad foreigners with their nose buried in travel books and Japanese-English dictionaries walking down the street. There were more tourists in Kyoto than I had seen anywhere in Tokyo or anywhere else that I've ever been, for that matter (well, with the exception of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.) We then went back to the hotel and took a nap before going out to explore Gion, which is perhaps Kyoto's most famous historic neighborhood, due in part to the popularity to Arthur Golden's novel "Memoirs of a Geisha".